We have already become likethe Kurds
Croatian criticism of Europe concentrates on spiritualand moral questions. In July, there was a great sense of disappointmentin the Croatian Council of the European Movement:
Our voice didn't reach the ears of Europe until it was mixed with gunfire (...) Looking at Europe today, we are struck by the paradox that the role of an intellectual and moral leader has been taken over or should be taken over by etatist, paraetatist or neoetatist organisations like EU, or the CSCE, which according to their nature can be everything but not the instance of intellectual conscience and moral consciousness. That is the reason why Europe has two discourses: the first one in which it gives lectures on freedom, fraternity, equality, truth, justice, human rights, as well as on the right of self-determination and the second one in which these festive lectures have been adapted to the state interests.
Europe is not a moral instance for Croats. In June,criticism seizes the intellectuals too:
It is evident that European intellectuals are not well acquainted with our circumstances, and those who prefer violence take advantage of it (...) We should be optimists and believe in wonder although we have already become like the Kurds.
At the beginning of August the newspaper reported onan interview which President Tudjman gave to Der Spiegel, where he stressed:
The defence of Croatian freedom is a matter for the whole Europe.
At the end of the same month the President legitimisedthe struggle for Croatia as the struggle for Europe:
We hope that the European countries, EU, and the USA, as the greatest world power will understand that the Croatian struggle for its territorial integrity, its freedom and democracy is not only the fight of Croatian nation, but also the fight against the restoration of socialist communism (...) the fight for normal conditions when Croatia can join Europe, where she historicaly belongs.
But in October the President was no longer expectinghelp from Europe. He wrote to President Bush:
They * want to cut us violently out of Europe and leave us in the darkness of a dying Yugoslavia. Europe has forgotten us and therefore you are our last chance.
In August, a few attempts were still being made torationalise the European attitude toward the war in Croatia:
The world is full of such problems and there is no reason why should just we feel as if we were the centre of the world about which everybody schould be excited. Europe is not to blame (...) We should understand Western Europe.
To evoke pityand mercy
The image of Europe could no longer be saved in theCroatian media. In September, a bitter disappointment was vented:
How many innocent people will pay with their lives an insatiable appetite of the Byzantine monster in the front of the eyes of indolent Europe? What will "the old lady" give as a chance to those whose great-grandfathers have left their bones on her bastions.
The feeling of despair even induces one to threaten:
Europe will rue it if she still allows brutal wars of conquest to succeed in 1991.
Anyone who ascribes decadence to Europe, at the sametime identifies with superior moral values. In October, the Croats at lastbecame more European then Europe itself.
Somebody said that Europe was ill. That's right. Europe is ill in its wealth. The Croatian nation has preserved its morality and its christianity.
Finally the Croats find its last shelter in their autheniticrole of the martyr:
For almost three hundred years of an uninterrupted war of defense, Croatia has acquired the honest title - antemurale christianitatis - the outer battlements of Western European Christian culture. But this title has been paid for dearly. Croatia has been reduced to the remnants of the remnants. The best evidence for it is its strange shape on the map. For three whole centuries Croatia has been bleeding on its burned and destroyed homes. Entire generations, one after the other, have been sacrificed in defence of their homeland and the whole European civilization. During these three centuries, when at that time the largest non-Christian power in the world was destroying, devastating and conquering Croatia, the western part of the Christian world has slept soundly behind its battlements and developed in every respect (...) At the end of the 20th century (...) Croatia is again in danger from the East (...) The Croats defend their home and their system of values which has been built by Western democracy. And what are Europe and America doing? Western and the other part of world are watching it with an easy conscience. No one wants to intervene actively and that is a betrayal of what they owe to Croatia.
Thus,
Croatia cannot avoid its charismatic sacrifice, and this makes it similar to some other south Slavic nations. For Croatia this sacrifice is the witness of its struggle in which it has always been condemned to defeat but never to a priori retreat.
At the end of that year one Croatian writer describinga journey throughGermany wrote:
To be a Croat today means to evoke pity and mercy. A lot of people have expressed to me their own bitterness about indolence and sluggishness and sometimes about the blatant corruption of European politicians.